


Out of the Dark, Out of the Cold

by TJK



Category: Hobbs & Shaw (2019)
Genre: Developing Friendships, Frenemies, Siblings
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-08-18
Updated: 2019-09-08
Packaged: 2020-09-06 15:10:11
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 8,415
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20293522
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TJK/pseuds/TJK
Summary: It was safer for everyone else that Luke Hobbs worked alone.  He'd learned that lesson back in Brazil, and after Elena hadn't returned from Cuba he'd refused even temporary partners.It was safer for Deckard Shaw that he worked alone.  He'd given up counting the number of knives in the back he'd dodged over the years and just returned them with interest these days.Neither of them is quite sure what to do about it when their paths start crossing.  There are days when explosives aren't entirely out of the question.





	1. Somewhere Along the Scottish Coast

Luke hit a bump and swore as his knee nearly cracked him in the chin. Damned English Barbie cars. Or maybe it was Scottish Barbie cars up here. Whatever.

Another bump, this time accompanied by a horrible whine from the engine as he fought to keep the damn thing on the road. Not that he hadn’t appreciated the Barbie car aspect of the thing when one of the idiots he’d been sent to bring in had tried to run him over with it, but why the hell one of them couldn’t have brought a decent sized truck along when they were rendezvousing on a windy, muddy stretch of deserted dirt he had no idea.

A spike of pain ran up his arm from his wrist as he fought the wheel against the mud again on the next turn of the switchback, but he ignored it as he dragged the car around. There was an ocean off that way somewhere, and he really didn't have any interest in going for a swim tonight.

When he got back he was going to have a word with intelligence because despite reports of a hasty setup of the main camp they’d had time to install a couple nasty booby traps, and there was a solid half of the strike force he’d been expecting to encounter still missing. Not to mention the explosives they’d supposedly been picking up before their meetup with the rest of the group. He couldn’t say that he’d been particularly been looking _forward_ to those reinforcements arriving, not when he’d already been dealing with damn near two dozen terrorists and said booby traps, but their absence was decidedly suspicious.

That suspicion had kept him on high alert as the cleanup team had swept in at his radio call, dealing with the official arrests and site sanitization—more the latter than the former, which he couldn’t say was atypical—and he’d declined their invitation to ride back to wherever they were staying in favor of another deep sweep of the remains of the site. Despite one of the computer guys reporting that an initial dive into their system indicated successful recipt of the explosives he'd still found no sign of them, though, no indication that the other half of the force had been and gone for whatever reason....

The engine squealed around the next curve, and he swore again. In summary the sweep had turned up absolutely nothing of use, and right now this stupid car was almost making him regret not catching a ride back with the cleanup crew.

Almost.

It wasn’t that they were bad guys to work with. They knew their jobs and stayed out of his way while he did his which was all he asked these days. Once upon a time that hadn't been true, but he'd spent so long building a team that he could work in lockstep with—that could keep up with him—that after Reyes had slaughtered them around him he hadn’t been able to face trying to do it again. He'd been able to deal with Toretto's crew well enough, especially with Elena as his actual partner, but then after Cuba…well, these days he worked solo. Period. And he was generally fine with that. The occasional regret did come along when he was beat half to hell and jammed into a vehicle meant for half a person, though.

The engine whined again, this time the sound ending in a pathetic sputter, and he sighed. There was no way that he was making it back to the base camp tonight, not in this thing. He could radio in a second time, this time asking for that pick up, but given that he’d already declined it chafed at his pride. And he had a good enough memory to recall the directions to the local safehouse on the map that he’d seen. It looked pretty tiny, but the markings had indicated it was a joint place so he shouldn’t have to fight about right-to-access or any of that crap, and it wasn’t like he was hurt bad enough to require more than the first aid supplies he had in his vest. He'd figure out another means of transportation tomorrow.

An hour and a half later he limped up to the door of the supposed safehouse and sighed. He’d correctly recalled the markings, but in this case ‘joint’ obviously meant that everyone expected everyone else to keep it up and no one actually maintained the place. From the look of things it was barely more than a one-room shack, and one that had seen better days at that. He touched his radio again and then shook his head. At this point by the time someone could get to him and get back to the base it would be nearing morning anyway. Might as well catch whatever sleep he could. At least he’d have it to himself.

Lacking a key he started to raise a leg to give the door a kick before thinking better of it as his opposite knee protested. Not severely, but he could have done without the hike after the car had given up the ghost several miles back. As he’d noted before, all of his injuries were more obnoxious than dangerous, but that didn’t mean that he enjoyed the aches and pains and occasionally sharper spikes that let him know they were there.

The kick would have been wasted energy anyway as the door flew open with a bang at a solid shove, and then reflex had Luke on the floor and rolling with his sidearm in his hand and injuries forgotten. A sudden light from the far corner had temporarily blinded him, but not before he caught a flash of someone else diving into darkness.

The string of profanity that followed identified his opponent before he pulled the trigger, probably because the light had given Luke’s identity away, and Deckard Shaw moved out of the shadows a moment later. Hands free of any weapons, and Luke rolled his eyes and shifted to his knees, returning the favor. Shaw was absolutely vicious when he wanted to be, but as it turned out ‘when he wanted to be’ had some stipulations that even Luke couldn’t argue with. He couldn't say that he was particularly _happy_ to see the other man, but...technically there were worse options for people he could encounter tonight. Technically.

“What the hell are you doing here?” Luke demanded.

“None of your business,” Shaw snapped back. “Get outta my safehouse.”

“Like hell ‘your’ safehouse,” And Luke wasn’t about to leave on Shaw’s say-so either. Still, with Shaw stripped to the waist and what was upon closer examination a set of rough first aid supplies set out in front of the light…. He got to his feet. “What, did the girl scouts gang up on you?”

Two fingers flicked upwards in his direction, and Luke snorted as Shaw turned—not his back, he was a paranoid bastard right along with everything else, but sideways, at least—and moved back into a sitting position near the light.

“This means there’s no electricity here, either, is there?” he asked as he stepped forward, gesturing at the camping lantern.

“That’s a bad joke, right? This place hasn't been used in years.”

“Of course it hasn’t.” Sometimes he hated being right. Luke moved closer, sinking down on the opposite side of the light, and eased his vest off. His wrist hurt even more after that dive. He could make out two doors in the shadows going deeper into the building, but given that Shaw was a paranoid bastard and had still set up out here he didn't see much point in a closer examination.

Shaw scowled but didn’t say anything else as he went back to work stitching up an ugly gash on his chest. By the time he was done Luke had finished confirming the inventory of his own injuries, and after bracing his wrist and slapping bandages on the worst of the rest of the lot he shifted to stretch out on his back and devoured a couple protein bars. And flung one at Shaw’s forehead when he put the needle down, just on general principle.

Shaw caught it well before it could hit him and shot Luke a glare.

“You haven’t asked what I’m doing here,” Luke observed. He'd chatted with Hattie a few times since she and Shaw had left Samoa, but although he and Shaw had also swapped phone numbers, they hadn't had any particular reason to speak.

“You’re right. Could be because I don’t give a rat’s arse.” He pulled his shirt back on and then looked at the bar for a minute before shrugging and tearing open the wrapper.

Luke scoffed. He’d never say it out loud, but Shaw wasn’t actually stupid, and this was very much his backyard. And there were those missing explosives. He turned his head. And there was half a strike force that had never turned up who, per intelligence, had been supposed to pick up those explosives from an unnamed contact. “Did you actually bring them any explosives, or did you just kill them at the drop point?”

Shaw’s expression edged towards murderous and he didn’t respond.

“They hit me with one of your damn Barbie cars, you know.”

Shaw snorted and his lips twitched slightly as he shifted to mimic Luke's position, reaching out to shut off the camping light. “Shame. If they’d asked I’d have told ‘em to use a tank. Wouldn’t even have charged ‘em for the advice.”

Bastard. Not that Luke wouldn’t have returned the favor, given a chance. “Why didn’t you take the whole job?” Shaw might have taken a few hits tonight, but nowhere near enough to slow him down. As Luke knew from experience.

“I swear, you're as thick as two short planks.”

“You’re one to talk.” Silence met his statement, and he raised an eyebrow that went unseen in the darkness. “Do you want me to beat it out of you?”

"I'm right here, anytime you want to try.”

Luke kept his mouth shut, and after a few minutes he heard a sigh.

“You really have lost the plot, haven't you? I might have taken a job, but I guarantee that it isn’t the one you’re thinking of."

"Meaning?"

"I got a tip a few weeks back said there was a crew looking for some explosives. That’s up my alley well enough, but I didn’t much like the look of things when I started digging so I dealt with it. _After_ delivering the explosives and letting them radio out confirmation, because I can’t do anything if I actually start double-crossing people.” A snort. “Odds are they’re blaming your lot, assuming there’s anyone left anywhere to do any blaming.”

“Damn it, Shaw, what the hell is wrong with you?” Luke had to ask, hearing the tension rise in his own voice. “Why did you refuse to come back in? They’d take you back, and it’s got to be better than….” He didn’t even know how to describe the well-beyond-grey area that Shaw lived in. Hattie would speak for him. Luke would too, even if he had to bite his tongue over a thousand insults while he did it, because what Brixton had admitted to doing was unthinkable. Luke might prefer to work alone these days, but if he’d had his team’s deaths blamed on him immediately after their murders, had been thrown out in the cold and left there for eight years, he didn’t have the first idea how he’d have handled it. He wanted to say that he wouldn’t have turned into a homicidal smurf with a distinctly arsonistic bent, but….

"Remarkably short planks.”

“They called you before, didn’t they?” Luke pressed, ignoring the insult. “When the virus got loose?” Granted that some of that had to have been because Hattie was his sister and someone would have made that connection even if it had been scrubbed from all of the records that Luke had seen, but given Shaw’s reputation there had to have been more to it for them to be allowed to make the call. “Maybe they’d slap you with some kind of token reprimand, but there’s got to be someone up high enough who could—”

Luke doubted that the string of words that Shaw cut him off with were complimentary, but since he wasn’t quite sure what most of them meant he was left with only the general desire to knock Shaw's teeth in. “You want to try that again in English?” he asked as Shaw went silent. “I mean, real English, not whatever that mess is that you speak.”

Something struck him in the side of the head, and it only took a moment to identify Shaw’s empty canteen. And to throw it back.

Shaw grunted but for once didn’t escalate. “When those rose-colored glasses come off you’re in for a world of hurt, you know that?”

“Excuse me?”

“All your talk about the ‘right’ side, the ‘right’ way…I’d assumed that you couldn’t possibly be that naïve, but now I’m starting to wonder. MI6, your CIA, plenty of others that wouldn’t admit it even with a gun to their collective heads, they never _stopped_ calling me. Do you understand that? Less than a year after I was blacklisted for murdering my entire team and I was already getting calls. They might use backchannels these days, but with what I’ve seen, what I’ve done, I’m exactly where everyone wants me. Well, except for maybe Hats, but unlike you she’s got the brains to read the room without me pointing out the obvious.” A snort. “Shite taste, but brains.”

“You can’t be serious.”

“Of course I’m serious. Look at you. How much worse could her taste get?”

“Shaw, so help me….”

He scoffed. “And here I thought that trying to drill anything through Owen’s thick skull was hard. _Think_, dumbarse. Whatever Eteon, Brixton, all of that lot did, do you really believe you're the only one who noticed that my discharge seemed to be light on some details? But my skillset and complete deniability to go with it, where’s their downside to leaving me out in the cold? Fact is, as much as I’d like to tell 'em to fuck off, there’s plenty of stuff needs doing, and everyone’s better off with me getting the job done instead of sending in a pack of eighteen year old cannon fodder who’ll only get themselves killed.”

Luke stared through the darkness, remembering a man who’d insisted, openly and at his daughter’s soccer game no less, that the US government needed him. The world needed him. And yet nothing he did would be sanctioned and he was on his own if anything went wrong. He'd taken the job because he'd had to, it had never been in question that something like that couldn't be left out in the open—'stuff needs doing,' to echo Shaw—but it was a side of the powers that be that he didn't like thinking about. Shades of grey made him uncomfortable.

“What, nothin’ to say?”

This time Luke was the one who fumbled for something to throw because in the end that same government had let him be sent to a maximum security prison on charges that wouldn’t stand up to a stiff wind, and as much as he’d never admit it out loud—as much as he could barely admit it to himself sometimes—there had been nights in the dark with only the echoes of a thousand prisoners breathing around him when he’d wondered if he would be left there forgotten. "You could force the issue," he finally said, on the heels of pitching one of the protein bar wrappers in Shaw's general direction. "There has to be a paper trail somewhere."

"Could. Won't."


	2. In the General Vicinity of a Drug Lord's Compound

Too bloody many guns. Deckard slammed the lid back onto the crate with more force than necessary and stepped back from the truck that held at least fifty more crates of the same size, scowling. He'd known that he was after an arms shipment, but he hadn't been expecting _this_.

And his damn shoulder hurt where one of the guards had managed to get him from behind with the toothed edge of a crowbar. Dex had dodged the strike quickly enough to save his skull and put himself in a position to crush the idiot's throat, but he'd still caught a more-than-glancing blow and it wasn't as if he was wearing body armor.

He frowned as he considered the truck again. Someone like him was expected to have caches of weapons scattered around, and if he kept them no one would ever ask about their origin, but he was on the wrong side of the planet to have a supply line in place to deal with a shipment of this magnitude. And even if he wasn't, the only use he'd ever have for that many semi-automatics was if he wanted to play at arms dealer. Which...he had done it a few times in the past, but it was a chancy thing at best. Definitely not a role that he liked. Explosives were one thing, someone coming to him for explosives generally already had a particular target in mind and it was no trick to do a trackback and determine if said target was worth the kind of protection an intercept risked, but with guns, it was next to impossible to control anything beyond the immediate drop. 'Shot with one of his own guns' was one of those bad jokes that came true far too often for his tastes.

Not to mention that there were some places where, if a gun that had passed through his hands ever turned up, he didn't think he could live with himself.

So, cheers, he didn't want to go that route even if he could think of a way to make it work.

For a moment he was tempted to call Hattie. With everything that had happened she deserved some kind of feather in her cap, and bringing in an arms shipment of this size would definitely be that. Unfortuantely it would also draw eyes to her, and since she'd decided to stay with MI6 what she _needed_ right now was to keep her nose clean and fly under the radar until suspicions subsided to their typical, paranoid levels. He'd made it pretty clear when he'd first been contacted that anyone trying to carry out that kill order was going to regret it—she might have scrubbed her history when Brixton had set him up and Owen had, as per usual when he let his temper get the better of him, gone round the bend, but she was still his little sister and that wasn't happening on his watch—and he couldn't deny that Hobbs had done right by her through his government, but none of that could stop the whispers and the sideways looks she had to be enduring right about now

Well, that she'd be enduring whenever she woke back up, anyway, given their currently-opposing time zones. Probably best that he didn't make that call. She never had been a morning person.

At this point the easiest option would probably be to destroy the guns, but with that particular make even if he drove the truck straight into a lake it would take some time before they were damaged beyond repair. Nor were there any large lakes in the immediate vicinity. Large quantities of explosives would do the job to a certainty that he liked, but for once he wasn't sure that he was carrying enough. It wasn't typically a problem that he ran into, but his plan for intercept had relied on quick movement, and he hadn't brought much of anything he hadn't expected to need in the fight. There were still a couple grenades in his pocket, but from his earlier inventory there hadn't been any ammo included anywhere in this shipment, and fifty crates of metal weapons took a lot of exploding.

He checked the time and then gave up on his quest for an immediate answer and began to sanitize the site. Whatever he did, he needed to get off this sorry excuse for a road before any 'friends' of the arms dealer came looking. Specifically 'friends' working for the local drug lord the guns had been destined for. It would be no trick to take out a patrol or two—hell, the grenades would serve for that—but with so many guns to account for they'd be out in real force as soon as anyone was confirmed missing.

For lack of anything else to do with them he put the bodies in the back of the truck between a couple crates and trusted that the kicked up dirt and mud would do enough to hide the blood left behind. There wasn't much he could do about the torn scrub and the bullet holes in the surrounding foliage, but it had been scraggly enough to start with that hopefully it wouldn't be completely obvious that this was the kill zone.

He tossed his bag into the truck and then swung himself in on the driver's side, cursing as the pressure from the back of the seat made him conscious once again of the growing wet spot on his shoulder. Damn crowbars.

Still, he wasn't in any danger of bleeding out, and he started the truck up quickly. Priorities and such. He'd scouted thoroughly enough to know where the hard packed roads were in this area, and even if he couldn't risk using them for too long, he needed to get himself out of the immediate vicinity without leaving an obvious trail. After that he'd either take another look around for that lake or see what he could do with the explosives that he did have.

The first turnoff wasn't more than a few kilometers ahead, and he accellerated as best he could on the rough road. He didn't particularly want to run any of the locals off the side, if only because that would make him memorable—well, more memorable, the truck wasn't exactly small—but at the same time there was a good chance that anyone coming down the road at this particular time was someone in the pay of said local drug lord so it probably wouldn't matter in the end. The truck engine whined as he made the left and pressed forward, and he sighed and backed off a bit. Not that he wanted to, but killing the engine in the middle of the road wasn't going to improve his situation in any way.

The next turn was the one that would take him past the twisting drive that led to the original destination of the weapons, and he checked that his sidearm was loose. The shots that he'd made to take out the driver and the first of his companions earlier had left their marks on the windshield, literally, and he couldn't afford to give anyone playing lookout a chance to get a warning back. 

At first it seemed as if his preparation had just been paranoia, which he was actually perfectly fine with, but then his instincts screamed and he threw the wheel hard to the right before he even consciously recognized what he was doing. But it was Kandahar and the dirt ahead disturbed _just_ so all over again, and as the truck fishtailed and the weight dragged the back around to create a barrier between himself and the line of explosives he grabbed his gun and threw himself out of the back of the cab.

The truck came to a halt against a pile of dug-up dirt before it hit the line, kind of a shame in retrospect since if there were as many explosives in that line as he thought it might actually have solved his current dilemma, but at least it gave him an option for cover rather than forcing him out into the open as he'd originally feared. He caught the edge of the platform mid-dive and used the momentum to somersault himself under the cab, taking up a guard position against one of the large tires. Someone was barking at him to exit the truck with his hands in the air—in English, which made just perfect sense in this country—and he ignored it in favor of scanning what little he could see from his position under the truck. Which wasn't a lot, and even less that made sense.

More shouting, still in English, and something nagged at his memory, but he was more focused on the immediate situation. Line of explosives over there and no way of knowing what their weight trigger was; no thank you. No sign of any humans besides the shouter which indicated a lack of manpower since a team would have the truck surrounded by now, but that didn’t simplify his situation all that much. Well, he could almost certainly make it out from under the other side of the cab without giving the person doing the shouting a clear shot, and if he went up the side of the truck from there he'd be in a decent sniping position against said shouter, but he'd grabbed his sidearm instead of his rifle so it was no sure thing. And if there was a second combatant out there lying in wait.... 

Since an attack didn't seem immediately iminent, he decided not to risk it and focused on who this new adversary might be. The people buying the guns trying to skip the buying stage were the most likely culprits, especially given how close to the compound he was, but they had enough manpower that the truck would have been swarmed as soon as it came to a halt. This shouting from the brush nonsense meant a much smaller team. And a _stupid_ one if they weren't already associated with the local drug lord, again considering the location. Unless they’d already taken out the main compound? In that case it would have made a lot more sense to wait until the arms shipment had arrived, though; save this overly-complicated setup.

Another shout, and he found himself cursing. Solo operator, quasi-familiar voice—marginally more than quasi when he was actually paying attention—and vast amounts of general stupidity. “’f you shoot me, I’m damn well returning the favor, and I guarantee I'm a good enough shot to hit even your pin-sized head!” he yelled.

The voice had cut off mid-order as soon as Dex had started shouting back, and then there was a curse that indicated that Hobbs was about as happy about the situation as he was.

Dex pulled himself out from under the truck and scowled into the brush as Hobbs stomped his way out, and they were left glaring at each other for several minutes.

“You aren’t an arms dealer,” Hobbs finally said.

Dex jerked a thumb at the truck. "They're taking a long nap. You aren’t an arms buyer.”

Hobbs mimicked his gesture but towards where the compound was. Or, apparently, had been.

As less-than-thrilled as he was to see the other man, this did present a possible solution to Dex's problem. Much as he hated admitting it. “Suppose this means you have a way to deal with this lot,” he growled.

“You don’t?”

“Well, I've found C4 to be effective in many situations.” Not that he had any at the moment, but the comment wiped that stupid superior look from Hobbs' face which was good enough. “And I suspect I can repurpose that easily enough for some added bang,” he said with a nod at the line of mines. “Save a lot of smashed vegetables the next time some poor farmer passes through.”

“Or you can just hand the guns over and save me having to kick your ass first.”

Dex scoffed.

Still.

Truckload of weapons.

Damn principles.

“Happy birthday, princess.”

Hobbs snorted and his lips twitched as he headed for the back of the truck.

Dex shook his head and turned for the mines. The things couldn't stay here, and if one of them had to do disarmament he knew who he wanted on the job. And never mind the fact that Hobbs had probably been the one to plant them in the first place. The arming mechanism was nothing special, no surprise there, and he knelt and went to work.

Hobbs finished whatever he was doing and came to join him but had the sense not to try and help until it was time to start picking the mines up. At which point Dex backed up and let him toss them into the canvas bag he'd probably carried them out here in and then that into the truck on top of the bodies. His shoulder was complaining even worse than before, and he had a bad feeling that the itching sensation he could feel making its way down his back was more blood. Probably courtesy of that tumble under the truck. He twisted towards the cab, trying to remember if he had anything more substantial than a roll of gauze his bag, but he didn't think so. Most of his supplies were back at his campsite.

Someone was behind him suddenly, and reflex had him spinning away with his arms coming up in a guard position, injury forgotten.

“Whoa!” Hobbs stepped back, raising his hands. “Easy. It looks like you're bleeding pretty good.”

“So?”

Hobbs reached into his vest and pulled out a first aid kit. “Do you want me to bandage it up?"

Dex stared at him.

"Hello? Medical attention? I mean, you may not be familiar with the concept given that not only are you clearly rabid, you're almost certainly riddled with STDs that haven't even been named yet, but injured human beings are generally in favor.”

Dex scowled and backed up a little further, although he let his arms fall back to his sides. "I'm fine. I can deal with it myself." He'd learned a lot of tricks for patching himself up over the years.

"And you wonder why I think you're an idiot. You're just going to rip it open further if you try and do it yourself."

"I'll manage."

Hobbs rolled his eyes. "For fuck's sake, would you turn around and hold still for thirty seconds? I'm not giving you a ride anywhere if you're going to bleed all over my new truck."

"Like hell _your_ new truck, and I don't want a ride."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks to everyone for reading, kudos, and reviews.


	3. A Short Interlude from a Flat in London

“I know your brother's an idiot, but is he seriously an idiot?”

For an instant ‘What brother?’ was on the tip of Hattie’s still-half-asleep tongue. It had been her answer since she’d scrubbed her records to remove any reference to her family eight years ago, and if there were still a few people at MI6 who knew the truth, that number was getting fewer and fewer as time wore on. The ones left certainly knew better than to bring it up, and given the decision Dex had made, she'd decided to leave it that way. Even if she didn't like it.

This was Luke, though, even if that wasn’t generally how their chats started, so “Which brother?” was her far more appropriate response. Not that she really had to wonder, not when Luke was the one asking the question. Grinning, she followed the question immediately with, “And also: Hello to you too. Why, yes, it is lovely here today, and I’m doing quite well. Thank you so much for asking. How are you, your daughter, your family, and so on?”

He chuckled. “Sorry. Hello. The one not curretly locked in a maximum security prison.”

Even if they'd managed to get him into one, there was no chance that Owen had stayed locked in a maximum security prison for more than a week after Dex—or worse, Mum—had found out about it, but since Luke didn't seem to know that, she decided not to worry him. Especially since he did already sound genuinely concerned about whatever 'an idiot' currently meant with regards to Dex. “Very rarely, in my experience. Why, what did he do?” After the last time Dex and Luke had crossed paths, or at least what she assumed had been the last time, Dex had had a few pointed things to say about dumbarse DSS agents who needed annotated diagrams to find their own knobs, but that had been a couple months back. 

“Stomped off into the brush with his back half-covered in blood not two hours ago without even letting me put a damn bandage on whatever he'd had done to him. And I don’t care if he’s a circus contortionist in his spare time, there’s no way he could bandage anything in that spot without doing himself even more damage.”

Well, that explained why he was calling a whole five minutes after she'd woken up, and Hattie frowned. Dex had said that he trusted Luke even if he didn’t like him, and she believed him. Hell, she was actually pretty sure that he didn't _dis_like Luke nearly as much as he insisted that he did since if nothing else Dex respected competence. If he’d needed help he would have said so.

Wouldn't he have?

Her stomach twisted a little as she lowered her mobile to type a quick message. Most of the time when she talked to Dex it felt like talking to the same person she'd always known. He was quieter than either she or Owen had ever been except when it was time for action, but that wasn't new, nor was the offbeat and occasionally morbid sense of humor. He was still the same big brother that would throw himself in front of a helicopter or intimidate two arsehole upper-level MI6 interrogators for her without a second thought, not, of course, that the last had ever happened or that she wouldn't have been perfectly capable of dealing with it herself if she'd felt like wrestling with the paperwork that would have gone along with such an action.

But then sometimes, maybe in response to something she'd said or maybe just due to some dark thought of his own, he'd suddenly sound different, and she'd remember again that he'd been on his own for the past eight years. She had no idea what had happened to him or what he'd done in that time, and there was no chance that he would ever give her anything like a full accounting, but she already knew that there were things he regretted. That alone told her how bad it had to be because Dex had always been one to do what he had to and take the consequences as they came, no reflection necessary.

She, however, was a bit more prone to self-reproach, and she stared at the screen, willing Dex to answer. Who knew what kind of hurts he'd taken over the years with no one to help him. Maybe it _wouldn't_ occur to him to ask or accept help anymore. He never had liked anyone seeing his back in general, and with someone he did respect....

“It's not like I'm going to stick a knife in between his shoulderblades,” Luke muttered, muted slightly by the distance of the phone from her ear. “I mean, yeah, I guess technically I did try to blow him up, but it's not like it worked. And how the hell was I supposed to know he'd already stolen the guns, anyway? I didn't even know he was in the country!”

There was a lot to unpack there, most of which she probably shouldn't for a wide variety of security-related reasons, and habit made her check that her phone was set up for encryption. Luke wasn't new to this game either, though, and at about the same time she confirmed that there was no chance of anyone overhearing their conversation, her phone buzzed.

She choked on a laugh despite herself, and if it was partly from relief, well, there was no need to admit that to anyone.

“What?”

She put her mobile back to her ear. “Dex says, and I quote, 'Tell that wanker that the day I need his help with a bloody scratch is the day he might actually beat me in a fight. And I've seen better mine lays from a toddler pitching blocks.'” So apparently Luke really had tried to blow him up. Oops. She very much wondered what Dex had done in response.

“That's bullshit,” Luke shot back. “Tell him that if he hadn't been driving like a ninety year old grandmother they'd be picking his teeth out of the trees right now. And I've already kicked his ass more than once, so I'm not really seeing how that part applies either.”

“Oh, no, I am not playing the messenger here. He's fine." Which was all she really cared about. "Call him yourself if you want to talk to him.”

“Why the hell would I want to do that?”

Her phone buzzed again, and she rolled her eyes at the even more pointed insult—aimed at Luke, of course—that flashed across the screen. And then sent the exact same message to Dex. She needed to get ready for work. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> As always, thanks to everyone who reads/leaves kudos/reviews/etc.


	4. Far Closer to A Nuke than He'd Prefer to Be

Luke glared at the satellite photos, but they showed no sign of changing to suit his preferences. This entire situation was a clusterfuck, and damned if he could figure out what he was going to do about it.

The part that really pissed him off was that if they'd called him in six days ago, none of this would even be an issue. He'd have gone right through the dozen or so mercenaries this oh-so-cleverly-aliased Mr. Smith had hired, taken Smith down, gotten the backpack nuke back, case closed and on a plane home by dinnertime. He'd even have brought Smith in in one piece and breathing so they could get their questions answered. Just as a courtesy. 

But no, instead they'd called in the least competent Interpol officer that Luke had ever had the misfortune of encountering, who'd proceeded to bring in the least competent Interpol team across possibly the entire planet. By the time someone—Luke still wasn't sure whom, and he wasn't going to thank them when he found out—had thought to pick up the phone and call him, they were all neck deep in shit and sinking fast. He'd gotten here four hours ago and still hadn't found a single bright spot in the whole damn situation. 

Of course, the fact that two of those four hours had been spent getting 'briefed' by Interpol asshole number one, the third trying to drag anything in the way of intelligence that he could out of the rest of the team, and the last pouring over satellite maps that refused to cooperate with his desires wasn't improving his mood.

Those dozen mercenaries that Luke would have smashed through like tissue paper a week ago had multiplied to at least four times their original numbers; Luke suspected that there were actually closer to a hundred of them with the majority scattered around the countryside in small camps that no one had yet located. Or had even tried to, given the quality of the team he'd been thrown in with.

The majority of the known-quantity mercenaries were working for Smith, but the unknown others represented any number of potential buyers for said nuke, and then when you started talking nuclear weapons there was always the fun possibility of a few fanatics thrown into the mix. More of a probability than a possibility in Luke's opinion, given the history of the region.

To make things even better, the mercenaries, Smith, hell probably the children from the village down in the valley, everyone knew Interpol was here, because despite the fact that they'd gathered next to nothing that Luke would call solid, usable intelligence, they'd still managed to tip off everyone in the region of their presence. Under other circumstances Luke would have thrown up his hands half an hour after he'd arrived and told them to call in the army—someone's army, at any rate, damned if he knew whose was appropriate under the circumstances—and have it done with. It would be a bloodbath, but from everything he could see it was going to be that anyway. 

He tapped the satellite photos again and shook his head. Unfortunately, even without the distinct possibility of fanatics willing to turn the whole area into a nuclear wasteland, there were a handful of schoolchildren missing from that village he'd noted. The second any shooting started they'd be the first casualties, and that wasn't something he could abide without trying to do _something_ to salvage the situation. 

From what little intelligence he had, they were all from two or three houses on the edge of the village and had been taken shortly after Smith and his mercenaries had arrived. No doubt incentive for the town to keep quiet about Smith's presence. At this point he didn't even have confirmation that they were still alive, especially since Smith's presence was a more than open secret, but he wasn't willing to write them off so easily.

Of course, he seemed to be the only one. He'd only found out about the missing children by accident since 'they are not our priority' per Interpol asshole number one. Only Smith and the nuke were of interest, and never mind that if he repeated that one more time in Luke's hearing he was going to find himself in serious need of dental work. Damned if Luke could see a way to pull a pack of kids out of a mercenary camp on top of everything else, though.

Given a choice, at this point Luke would forget Smith and the mercenaries entirely. Stealth had never been his strongest suit, but if he could get in, get the kids, get the damn nuke...it wasn't as neat as the job would have been a week ago, but as clusterfucks went he'd seen worse outcomes. He'd been involved in worse outcomes. Once the nuke was out of the picture Smith and the mercenaries would disperse—that or turn on each other, which suited him just fine too—and if Interpol didn't get their questions answered, well, it served them right. This whole damn mess was their fault in the first place. But these photos made it pretty clear that he was going to have to go through at least some of those mercenaries on the way in, and if they brought the rest of the lot down on his head there would be no chance of getting the kids out. Or the nuke. Or even possibly himself, and that was rarely something that he had to worry about.

He didn't even know for sure where anything was in that camp, although from what he could see from the satellite photos there were only three possibilities for decent shelter against the rocks. And only one of them was in what he'd call a reasonable tactical position, although his definition of decent tactics weren't always the same as everyone else's. If the children and the nuke were kept separated that would make things even more difficult, and without knowing exactly how many children there were, what their ages were, if any of them had even a rudimentary understanding of English....

Interpol's interpreter could have gotten most of that information with a few basic questions down in the village, but that was yet another thing that hadn't happened and didn't look likely to in the near future given what Interpol asshole number one had said during Luke's briefing. Luke would go ask himself and damn what that idiot thought of it, but there was no disguising what he was, and under the circumstances he doubted that anyone would give him the time of day no matter what he did. He didn't even know any of the local dialect to help smooth things over.

With a sigh, he re-stacked the satellite photos and let himself out of his tent, debating his next course of action. The surveillance officer had completed exactly one other mission prior to this one and seemed completely unable to envision that there might be other bad guys beyond the known target, but he needed to know how quickly it would be possible for reinforcements to arrive once he was inside that camp. Even if said reinforcements were just as likely to be trying to steal the nuke for themselves than help Smith and his lot. If he could just get her to run the damn scans he'd have a starting point, but once again Interpol asshole number one had been pretty specific in his orders. If Luke couldn't convince her to do him a favor...well, he'd take more satellite imagery from the camp, but without corresponding heat readings it wasn't likely to tell him anything new. 

“Oi! You!”

Damn it.

The very last man that Luke had wanted to encounter marched up to him, and Luke kept his face blank. Tyler Corbin wasn't a small man at a bit over six feet, but somehow his habit of stretching out his neck to make himself look taller did the exact opposite, and the fact that he was actually trying to get in Luke's face wasn't improving Luke's mood.

“I don't know who you think you are, coming in here like you own the place, walking off with our photographic intelligence, all of that, but this is _my_ operation and I'm not interested in the opinion of some dumb muscle that headquarters decided to saddle me with!” he snarled.

Luke's jaw twitched. Not that plenty of people hadn't made the mistake of assuming that 'big' somehow equated to 'dumb', but very few of them had been stupid enough to say it to his face.

“I don't give a _damn_ about your ideas or your opinions!” Corbin continued. “I expect you to keep your head down and your mouth shut and stay out of the way until _I_ decide how to use you! Now I want my photos back and I want you to stay the fuck out of the way until someone asks for you, is that _clear?_”

One finger actually jabbed Luke's chest, and he decided that that was quite enough as one hand closed around Corbin's fist far too fast for him to react. And far too hard for him to get away. “Fortunately your opinions matter exactly as much to me as mine to you, and I sure as hell don't work for you."

Corbin's eyes got wider as Luke tightened his hand even further and twisted slightly. If he'd thought the man had any kind of combat ability he'd have been more careful, there was plenty of damage that could be done by a man standing as close as Corbin was, but under the circumstances he wasn't too worried. 

“Now, let's try this again. For starters, _I_ will handle this operation as _I_ see fit,” Luke continued, voice dropping an extra octave just for good measure, “and if you're stupid enough to get in my way or try and prevent me from using whatever intelligence you've managed to collect, I'll go through you even faster than I'm going to go through those forces out there. Is _that_ clear?" A snort. "If you want to spend your time on something productive, you might consider just how useless that intelligence is, how far south this operation has gone, and exactly why someone with my skillset got a call.” Not that Corbin had any idea what that skillset was, obviously.

“I—you can't—I'll be speaking to your supervisors about this!” Corbin tried to back up, but Luke's grip on his hand prevented him from getting far. 

Luke twisted his wrist a little further and held on just long enough to emphasize how precarious Corbin's situation was before letting him go. “Why don't you go do that.” 

Corbin scurried away, and Luke glared after him for a long moment. He probably shouldn't have antagonized the man to that extent, not if he wanted any cooperation from any of the Interpol team, but given the provocation—and, frankly, the mood he was in after twelve hours on a plane and his arrival in the middle of this mess—he couldn't bring himself to regret it all that much. It was almost a shame that Corbin was as useless as he was, because under the circumstances Luke wouldn't mind a good fight.

“You know, I was going to ask how even you managed to create such a cock-up, but I think I'll save the oxygen," an accented voice just behind his elbow said as Corbin hurried away with his shoulders hunched.

Luke snapped around an into a true defensive stance. Unlike Corbin, Shaw could inflict ridiculous amounts of damage from almost any position, and Luke hadn't even heard him approach. “What the hell are you doing here?”

Shaw snorted, showing no inclination to attack. “Every decent mercenary for a thousand kilometers—and some of us better-than-decent from further—knows there's a nuke for sale. Where else would I be?”

“Damn it.” Luke relaxed his posture again. Not that he was actually relaxed, but as much as an opportunity for a decent fight was suddenly right in front of him, he also had even more to worry about. Forget a hundred mercenaries in the hills, based on that information there were probably two or three, and some of them nastier than he'd been counting on. “Why didn't they call me a week ago?” 

"Not like I ever want to see your ugly face either," Shaw offered.

Luke flipped him off. “I don't suppose there's any chance you're working for anyone who should actually have a nuke.”

“Not working for anyone at the moment. There's no one planning to bid who should actually have a nuke, and at least two who'll happily blow themselves straight to hell if it means no one else gets one.”

“Fanaticism confirmed, this day is just getting better. Not that your presence doesn't land it squarely in the toilet just on general principle, obviously."

Two of Shaw's fingers flipped up in the complement to Luke's single.

"Don't suppose you've heard anything about the kids?” Luke checked.

Shaw's eyes narrowed. “What kids?”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks again to everyone who reads/reviews/leaves kudos.

**Author's Note:**

> Likely to be a series of somewhat interconnected one-shots, more tags to be added as it goes. As always reviews are appreciated.


End file.
